In a
city full of baroque and neo-classical
statuary, two rather unusual pieces of sculpture stand
out. One is at the west end of the Villa Comunale in the
center of Piazza della Repubblica near the Mergellina
section of town. It is the "Monument to the Scugnizzo"
(photo, left). In the so-called "Quattro Giornate di
Napoli" (Four Days of Naples), a popular uprising
in September 1943 against German forces in Naples saw
Neapolitan scugnizzi
(street kids) engaged in harrying tactics against the
hard-pressed Wehrmacht, the German army, already
in disarray in the face of the Anglo-American invasion
at Salerno. It is part of Neapolitan lore that such
armed civilian resistance helped drive the Germans from
the city. The monument consists of sculpted monoliths
raised on a platform; each slab contains intense detail
of humans involved in war. The monument is the work of Marino
Mazzacurati and was set up in 1963.
[Also see a New York Times
account of the episode in question.]

Also,
there is a large metal-wrought memorial on via
Toledo (via Roma) at Piazza Carità,
at the north end of the so-called "Spanish Quarter". The
monument is the work of Lidia Cottone and was
erected in 1971. It is dedicated to the memory of
Salvatore D'Acquisto, a 23-year-old Carabiniere
heroically involved in an incident in September, 1943.

One German soldier was
killed and two were seriously injured when a grenade
exploded in a crate of abandoned munitions they were
inspecting. The German commander was convinced,
however, that his men had been killed by a booby trap
set by the Italian resistance. He went to the nearby
Carabiniere station of Torrimpietra near Torre di
Palidoro and demanded of the young officer-in-charge,
D'Acquisto, that he find those responsible. D'Acquisto
argued in vain that the incident had been accidental,
at which point the German commander rounded up 22
Italian civilians to execute in reprisal for the
"ambush". At that point, D'Acquisto lied and took
personal responsibility for the incident. He was
summarily executed by firing squad, thereby
sacrificing his life for and saving the lives of the
civilian hostages.